


A Moment in Truth

by 60sec400



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Family, Family Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt and comfort, Truth Serum, high
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22617214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/60sec400/pseuds/60sec400
Summary: Jason is hit by a truth serum. He just wants his dad. But Bruce isn't there.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 35
Kudos: 456





	A Moment in Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlgamer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlgamer/gifts).



> Heyo! This fic is from a kinda prompt/discussion from a discord server I'm on where Jason gets hit or injected with a truth serum and calls Bruce dad without realizing it? And then I was like, oh, angst, I can make this even better. Bruce is being Dad-blocked. I can thank girlgamer for the prompt! Their tumblr is www.phantomchick.tumblr.com! 
> 
> Tbh, I've only written Jason once. So bear with me haha, and I'm sorry if the characterization is off! I did my best.   
> Enjoy!

Jason is. Jason isn’t, like, well…. Ah fuck.

He works alone, usually. Ever since Dick became Batman especially, Jason sticks to his area of the city, doing his thing. The thing is, he isn’t difficult to work with; he works with them _sometimes_ and gives them information if cases line up and run parallel and anyway, Jason isn’t really alone anymore, technically.

If he wants, he can call for help. It is a nice feeling.

The syringe of unknown substance is… probably something that requires help, because he doesn’t know what’s in it and really Jason doesn’t want to die on the side of this bar tonight like that. If it’s drugs, that’s stupid because what idiot would waste drugs on someone like that, but if it isn’t and it’s something much worse Jason really, really, doesn’t want to be alone.

Dying alone outside of a bar; what a way to go. In fairness, he already did the big boom kinda way to go so maybe this is recompense. He’s making up for it now. And the bar is gross too, so, like, ah fuck… double whammy.

He wheezes as he fits himself between several trashcans and a wall, sliding down a grimy wall and landing with a _thump!_ on the ground. It’s wet. Gotham is wet. Constantly. It is constantly raining, he thinks, a deep-set rain that isn’t heavy, but it settles in your hair and skin and bones. It’s a dampness that follows you inside even after you’ve showered and dried off, that exits in little spaces of existence because it persists no matter what. Gotham is wet. And Jason is annoyed.

Why’s he annoyed? Oh jeez, right, syringe. Okay.

Fuck.

He doesn’t want to be alone. He’s never… liked being alone. Used to something doesn’t equal enjoyment. Jason is used to being alone. That did not mean he had to like it. But that made it easier, once it came back, because he knew he was different and, yeah, obviously, the pit had _done some things_ that Jason hadn’t really acknowledge until recently. Everything had shifted left, his life before, and instead of rose-tinted glasses like he had assumed Dick constantly wore (an unfair non-truth but that was beside the point) everything he saw was tinged with green.

He didn’t hate Bruce.

Oh, wait, okay.

“Shit,” he muttered, “My head.”

His head was pounding. He was frustrated with Bruce and annoyed and… lonely. Could he not, for once, set aside his stupid pride and go back? They’d take him. Dick would in a heartbeat, there was no doubt in Jason’s mind about that. But Tim? Damian? Barbara?

Bruce?

“Where is he?” Jason muttered, the wet and dirty ground in front of him warped a little. Ooh, right, right. Jason needed to activate the homing… beacon? Bacon. Homing bacon. Haha. Homing bacon… humming bacon. Bacon was an animal. Animal… a bird was an animal. Hummingbird. Bird.

“Oh right,” he said out loud in case the weird shadow next to him was wondering what he was thinking about. “Bird.” He activated the emergency signal and waited.

Bruce would come. He was late last time but, like, this is fine. Jason was fine. What was he worried about again? Syringe. Ah, well, nothing he could do about it now. Some small part of him wondered why he’d been so worried about it earlier, he’d found a safe place to hunker down in and anyway, his dad was coming so it was good.

The shadow on the wall nodded a bit and Jason nodded back because, obviously, this mattered very much, and he needed to show that he understood. He shifted slightly and crossed his arms over his chest. He glanced down at his left arm.

“Oh,” he muttered, “Syringe.” It hung limply from his arm. He should… do something about that? Right? But then, if he tossed it… what would his dad do to fix the problem?

What was the problem?

Oh, good question, Jason had no fucking clue, but he’d be damned if he made it worse. Especially, like, not for his _dad._ That was stupid. Jason didn’t mean to cause problems he just. He got mad a lot. Kinda. And before, when Jason had come back, he just hadn’t _understood?_ He didn’t get it, the whole Joker thing, because he’d killed him and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

This was fine. Jason was fine!

Where was his dad?

Above him, Jason heard the familiar snap of a grapple line and someone landing.

“Here!” he croaked, but it sounded more like “hhhuuur”, so he stretched his jaw out and tried again. Except before he could get anywhere, the familiar shape of Nightwing (somewhere in the back of his head, he knew that wasn’t right) landed in front of him. His brother! Wow!

“Hood,” Nightwing said, concern lacing his voice, “What’s– oh my god, is that a syringe? What’d you get injected with?”

Jason frowned, because while that was a very valid question for a totally different time, he didn’t understand why Nightwing was here. “Where’s dad?” he slurred, blearily blinking up at the older man.

Nightwing blanched. “I–. What? Bruce?”

Jason sighed, “Dad! My dad! Your dad!” He gasped, “You have two whole dads!”

His brother stared at him for a long moment before his face fell and he nodded. “Right. Let’s um, let’s get you out of here. Bru–,” Dick paused, “Dad sent me.”

Jason’s face fell. “Oh. Is he mad at me again?”

“No, no!” Dick hurried to say, stepping forward to pull Jason up. Steading him on his feet, his brother said, “Not at all, dad loves you. He’s not mad at you. I was… closer. Christ, you’re bleeding. You’re hurt.”

Jason hung to Dick’s side as his brother removed the syringe from his left arm. “Kept it in for science,” he explained when Dick gave it a strange look.

“Ah,” his brother said. “Let’s get you home, alright? Where does it hurt?”

Jason leaned against him, ignoring the question, “Dad will be there?”

Dick looked sad, but he searched Jason all over. “Yeah… yeah, dad will be there.”

“Two whole dads,” he yawned, “I got… one whole one. But you have two!”

Dick nodded slowly. “Had… yeah. I do. And five awesome siblings.” He finds where Jason is bleeding, the wound is sluggish and red and clearly a stab wound of some sort. How Jason hadn’t noticed was… well, not beyond him, because his brother was high off his mind with something and not paying the slightest bit of attention.

Jason nodded very seriously, putting all his weight on his brother. The two shuffled back toward the street, away from Jason’s little spot, and the ground warped but Jason was fine! This was fine, he had his brother and he was going to see his dad and it was alright even if the ground was lumpy.

“Is the… goround… go round… merry go round,” Jason laughed, “Ha. Did you have a merry go round at the circus?”

Dick heaved Jason, who was taller (haha) and bigger and who weighed so much. When did his brother get so big? He glanced down at Jason and wheezed, “What?”

“Thinking about the ground.”

For the first time that night, Dick laughed lightly. “Oh, Jason. What would we do without you and your insightful thoughts? We need to tend your wound first. Come on, gotta sit you down again.” He shifts Jason to his side and lowers them both to the ground, Jason against the grimy wall again and Dick at his side. He pulls Jason’s helmet off and lays it to the side and then puts pressure on his abdomen.

Jason stares at his brother as he concentrates, focusing on the wound that Jason really didn’t feel so it couldn’t be that bad. “Dad isn’t mad at me, right?”

Dick brushes the white strand of hair from Jason’s forehead, damp with the ever-present rain. “No, Jason, Bruce isn’t mad at you.”

“Are you? I feel like, I think, I’m bein’ honest,” Jason blurts out.

“You’re being… very honest, Jason,” Dick says, pulling out some gauze from somewhere in his suit and wow how does he fit all that stuff in there? It’s really a wonder, cause the suit is kinda tight but there has to be someway he’s fitting all those things in there. Secret pockets! Jason had secret pockets too but all of Dick’s suit was secret pockets. A whole suit of secret pockets. That’d be really funny. Maybe that was the case. Dick’s name was really funny.

“You don’t look like a Richard,” he said, very seriously, because that was Absolutely True and he needed Dick to understand that.

Dick touched the comm in his ear, “Oracle can you analyze what this is? I think it might be truth serum.” He held the syringe up to his mask. Without looking at Jason, he said, “Dick more fitting then?”

“Yeah,” Jason sighed, “But you’re only sometimes a Dick. Heh. Heh, you’re a Di. Not a real Dick.” Jason gasped and gripped Dick’s arm. “Oh my god, you’re a dildo.” He glanced back up toward the sky, into the rain. Dad had always hated the rain when patrolling; it got into those little places of the suit. It had taken him ages to make it fully waterproof. “Dad’s coming?”

“I am not a dildo,” Dick said, “Jason, I think this is truth serum.”

“That’s really unfortunate,” Jason said.

“True,” Dick said, and then snorted to himself. “Alright, let me wrap this up, okay?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Jason said seriously, “Dad is coming right? I made him mad. I always make him mad. I don’t mean too.”

Dick glanced at his brother and touched his shoulder lightly. “I know, Jason. He’s not mad at you.” Everything coming out of his brother’s mouth right now was the absolute truth; full honestly. “I promise, he isn’t.”

“How do you know?” Jason said anxiously, pulling himself up against the wet wall.

“I know…you,” Dick said, “And I know… dad. You both are so alike. It’s hard.”

Jason nodded. “I don’t mean to make him mad.”

“I know, Jason.”

“I love him a lot,” Jason said, “He’s my one whole dad. Your second whole dad.”

Dick laughed lightly. “He loves you so much Jason. He would want you home. Come home, please?”

“I got hurt tonight,” Jason said, looking down at the wound.

“Yeah, I got you Little Wing.”

Jason nodded. “I know,” and then he patted Dick’s head.

His brother scrunched up his face and pulled Jason’s shirt up to lay the gauze down, wrapping the tap over his abdomen. “That bled pretty heavily Jason. What happened?”

Jason glanced down at the wound, thinking very hard about that. He wasn’t really sure, honestly. “Um,” he said instead, because he didn’t know. “A guy.”

“A guy?”

“Big guy. Lots of big guys, I think. Thought I could take them down.”

“I take it that wasn’t the case,” Dick said, “Jason, please, you can call for help.”

“Yeah,” Jason sighed, “I’m tired of being alone.”

Dick stopped working, letting his hands rest on his thighs. “You’re not alone. I don’t care what you do, we won’t abandon you.”

Jason wants to call him a liar. Wants to say that isn’t true, because he did get abandoned; his killer was still walking free. His dad wasn’t here right now. Why wasn’t he here? Jason just wanted his dad. He hurt all over; he was sore. He was bleeding even though Dick fixed him up.

His dad wasn’t here. Why? What did Jason do?

“I’m glad we got a dad,” Jason said, grasping at Dick’s hard. His grip was tight; a surprising amount of force in it for someone who’d been bleeding out not moments before.

“Bruce was a good dad, wasn’t he?” Dick mused, laying his hand on Jason’s. “We should get you back, Little Wing.”

“He was,” Jason sighed, “He tried. I hope I wasn’t a bad son.” He blinked blearily.

“You weren’t, Dick said with finality, “You weren’t. If Bruce were here, Jason, he’d… he was so proud of you. He was so happy you came back.”

“Yeah…” Jason yawned. “Me too.”

Dick pulled Jason against him, hugging his brother. No matter what, Dick Grayson gave the best hugs. “So proud, Jason. He’d want to be here.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah… he would. I miss him.”

Dick sucked in a breath, “I miss him too. You have us, Jason. Okay?”

Jason turned his face in toward his brother’s chest. “I know.” A moment passed. “Dick?” he asked, “Is dad coming?”

Dick held his brother close, his breathing shaky and his arms straining. “Yeah, Jason. He’s coming. Get some sleep, okay? Please? For… for dad?”

Jason nodded again. “Yeah,” he said, “For dad.”

* * *

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to reach me you can find me at www.thetrackrunner.tumblr.com. I also have a Dick Grayson discord server; feel free to message me for a link.


End file.
